Evergreen Blog Post on Gun Control and Mental Health

In the wake of every mass shooting tragedy in the United States, when the shooter is not somehow affiliated with the Islamic kind of terrorism, but rather the white, homegrown American kind, politicians and the popular media turn to some predictable talking points. One of those predictable talking points is mental health.

I’m writing this evergreen (journalism speak for “always timely”) blog post so I have something to reach for during those times, like right now, in the aftermath of the shooting in Las Vegas, which is currently the deadliest one in U.S. history. (That will likely be surpassed if we do not pass some seriously revolutionary gun laws, which will likely require amending the Constitution given the very recent rulings on the matter. Thus: Evergreen.)

Mostly I’m going to point to some things that I’ve written on gun control and pull some quotes so I don’t have to do this song and dance every time. Here we go.

I led with an astounding statistic: On ‘Jan. 6 [2017], BBC Magazine released a story on how Japan has nearly eradicated gun violence completely. According to the story, “only six shots were fired by Japanese police nationwide [in 2015]”—six total shots. Furthermore, “In 2014 there were just six gun deaths [in Japan].”’

Six total gun deaths. Total. Deaths. In a year. In that same year, the U.S. had 33,599 deaths, according to the CDC. Even controlling for the difference in population, the main factor is access to guns. (For other examples besides Japan, you can also look to the massive change in Australia since they somehow overcame a long cultural history of guns and got rid of them, too.)

But the most important thing to note is this: “Our gun-homicide rate here in the U.S. is about 25 times higher than other developed countries, according to the American Journal of Medicine. But, according to Kenan M. Penaskovic, M.D., professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the “percentage of the population struggling with mental illness is the same as the rest of the world.” Logically, then, mental illness alone is not the reason that we have so many more gun homicides in the U.S.”

I mean, obviously. But that doesn’t mean that people on the left and the right don’t scapegoat people with mental illness when they talk about guns.

But the hidden, horrifying statistic that no one wants to talk about is this: “Of that number [of annual gun deaths], a large percentage—63.5 percent to be exact—died by suicide. What that number means is that a person with a gun is more likely to use that gun to harm themselves that to harm someone else.”

No one talks about suicide because “self-harm doesn’t whip up the fear and frenzy required to blame a small group for a gun violence epidemic they didn’t cause.”

“Our gun problem is not a mental health problem, but people with mental illness are dying from guns—by their own hand. That is a real public health issue. Guns rarely give a person a chance to regret or change their mind if they are contemplating suicide. Suicide-by-gun is usually—starkly—final.” Read the whole piece here.

If you want to read a more in-depth take on the scapegoating of people with mental illness in the gun control debate, I wrote a piece called HELLER’S SCAPEGOATS for the North Carolina Law Review. (The title is a reference to D.C. v. Heller, the big case that basically lets anyone do what that want with guns. THANKS, SCALIA.)